UNIT 6 THE MARGINALISED VOICE
Structure
Objectives Women's Writing Rosemary Dobson Cock Crow The Aboriginal Voice Kath Walker We Are Going Let Us Sum Up Questions Glossary
6.0 OBJECTIVES
In this unit we will talk about the literature of two marginalised sections of society - women and the Aborigines of Australia Women have been deified or demonised at will, neither extreme according them the status and dignity of human existence. Although they constitute one half of humanity, their thoughts, &lings, aspirations and wishes have been routinely ignored. Now, @ey are coming into their own, their i~errnostconcepts, perceptions and experiences of being women, finding expression in am increasingly large number of works by women. The Aborigines of Australia too, having been dispossessed of the land of their forefhthers and denied basic human rights, are finally voicing their concerns and hurt, and their anguish over the passing away of an entire way of lik. Rosemary Dobson's poem speaks of the inner life of a woman while Kath Walker's delineates the collapse of the Aboriginal modes of living.
6.1 WOMEN'S WRITING
Women's writing has a pertinence and force fbr a variety of reasons. While projecting the observations, situations, responses and struggles ofthe female half of humanity, it also reflects a consciousness created by gender, the entity traditionally defined by the frameworks of kinship, marriage and procreation. At another level it questions values and constructs considered self-evident so h. It focuses attention on the d&nition of Womand creativity and raises a number of queries related to oppression and colonisation It has helped both to put together and express the idea of the female self as well as to dismantle the concept of the all-pervasive male figure. Working through revolutionary movements as well as silent changes, through legal, political battles and by breaching psychological barriers, women are beginning to know and discover themselves. All women's writing is not feminist and, even when gender identification overrides cultural barriers, certain cultural concepts also define and differentiate feminist positions. Feminist interp-tions, however, can flow out even through absence and denial and are not necessarily dependent on equivalence and identification. Many women writers are wary of their feminist affiliations even today for fear of being Mermarginalised as the feminist is not juxtaposed with the masculine but is regarded as a sub-culture and the voice and class of the victim uld the oppressed, thrust upon it. ~~d~~~ ~~~~~~li~~Feminism begins with the self - and not essentially the intellectual self. Most PO&,.,,(1901-1970) cultures define women's roles through their bodily behaviour, and their reproductive functions. Most sodieties have their own versions of conduct books for women, the majority of which have been written by men. Women's writing is occupied in changing the terms of these definitions, moving through individualism and analysis of the self toward assurance and confidence. It has projected different patterns and interpretations in lieu of the existing ones and attempted to crumble contrarieties. Men need, love and desire women but they do so in relation to their own selves. The desires and aspects of a woman's life which is not connected to their needs, does not usually interest them. Women's writing has learnt to express the untold narrative of being a woman through struggling against an internalisation of role models thrust upon them. It focuses attmtion on both the representation of a female sensibility, a feminine reality, and on its significance as a means of bringing about an awareness of this reality. Women's writing has been slow to find recognition, for several reasons. There were not enough women writers and not enough access to education to make their writing possible; history has neglected and drowned their contribution and their work has been disregarded as being involved with a limited world of experience since they were limited to domesticity. Their writing has been dismissed as inconsequential on the grounds that, according to religious and political thought, they held a subordinate position and were labelled as less rational and intellectual than men. Freedom is the first requirement for any type of creative endeavour for taboos, inhibitions and sets of controls fetter the pursuit of experience. Yet, women have been denied the fieedom to move, breathe and meet people fieely over centuries and confined to kitchens or behind the purdah and deprived of the openness and bhness of experience outside the domestic prison. Child-marriages, child- bearing and child-rearing were the other chains that prevented the woman's imagination fiom soaring and finding expression. They have been creatures split into two - the physical and the intellectual selves - with the latter having been largely left undeveloped due to the demands of society and fhily. While on the one hand women have been placed outside culture and history, on the other, they have been projected as the guardians of culture, expected to preserve and continue it through procreation and an adherence to tradition and rituals. Women's writing has questioned patriarchal concepts relating to their education, marriage and fhmily. There has been a tremendous amount of work done in the last three decades - the result of the &orts of hundreds of women across continents and cultures who have resisted domination. The accessibility to education, right to economic'independence, to vote and to inherit property have been the focus of socio-political struggles. While gender differences are acknowledged, they are not regarded as making women inferior in any way. TKhas led to an introspective analysis of the female self and the right to pride and dignity within it. In a sense, women's writing is the literature of silence for its meaning lies enveloped and disguised, preferring the subtle means of communication to the more overt ones. It also qualifies for this nomenclature for it seeks to express what has been eff$ced and suppressed and blanketed in the muffling cloak of silence for so long.
6.2 ROSEMARY DOBSON
Rosemary Dobson (1 920-1 985), taught art, was involved with cipher work during World War I1 and was also in the publishing business. She has edited a feminist anthology, Sister Poets (1 979). Her training in art manifests itself in poems on painters, painting and design. Hm is a detached, reflective writing, characterised The Margidised
by dsmanship and formal elegance. voice .' The Ship of Ice (1 948) illustrates the timelessness of art and its power to immortalise the fleeting moment. Her later poetry is concerned with personal expression -specially motherhood - and Greek themes. Due to her training in art, her poetry gains a quality of stillness akin to the paintings of the Dutch Masters. The words of her poetry select and arrange images from an experience. The poems record the surhx details that survive in memory or history or art, but in reading their careful relations, we reconstruct the passions and endurance, the despair and the agony that lie behind the surhce. Each poem comes, to use one of her titles, like 'The Message in the Bottle' to the reader who can .. . recognise in what I say the voice that speaks to me alone and he the predetermined, he the listener, finder, watcher of the wrack that's washed in hmthe sea
The messages in her bottles speak of love, poetry and oblivion. Love is the force in her work which transcends and redeems the individual; poetry, the art with which she makes sense of life; and oblivion, which is not only death but the unknowingness against which poetry and all the arts speak. The images in her poetry are drawn hmthe commonplaces of life. From those simple forms, we build, in our minds, the patterns that constitute the miracle of life itself. Although she takes the whole of time as her province, this makes her no less contemporary or Australian. She argues that 'every artist should have complete freedom of choice in his(her) ideas. It should not matter if (s)he ranges back in time provided .. .(s)he tries to use the equipment of thought and technique that is available to him(her) in his(her) own time with which to shape his(her) work.' Her poetry belongs to our time, with its emphasis on both the power and the inadequacies of the human mind, on the recovery and analysis lather than on a direct re-creation of experience and expression of emotion. We are aware, always, ofthe distance between observer and action, word and reality, in a world where mind and observation are the only realities. She writes as one who delights in the ambiguity of the detachment of art being not I only an alternative to life but an essential part of it, revealing at once, the wonder and fragility of the world. The wonder is humanity itself, which invests the world with the love, art, ceremony and science that fills her poems. There is also the realisation, however, that humanity, which realism the wonder of the world, also threatens it. \
6.3 COCKCROW
Please read the poem and answer the questions that follow so that you can I understand it better. I I a) What does the title suggest to you? b) What does the poet mean when she says at the end that she knew the meaning of what the cock was saying? c) Do you think 'three' has a special significance in this poem? What are the reasons for your opinion? ~e~~~~~li~~ Discussion Poetry f1901-1970) The poem gives expression to a woman's wish to be himelt; fit4of all social roles of mother, daughter, wife etc. Wanting to be alone, the poet walks the road between the town and her lit-up house - to and fio she strides three times while thoughts pummel her and she experiences a riot of feelings. She is adrift fiom the normal course of her routine; closed round by the dark trees on the lonely stretch of road and gradually feels herself 'absolved' of her bonds until it seems as though she is suddenly light, fidErom earthly ties, the only thing holding her being her feet on the ground. There is a metaphorical cutting of ropes and she seems to be drifting weightlessly. She wants to snap all bonds and be her individual self but this is not so easy, however, for human bonds are elastic, you may walk away but they pull you back. Even while she feels herself 'absolved' of the bonds, thoughts of her sleeping mother and daughter consume her mind and she feels a betrayer for walking away hmthem and shutting the door that links them to her. The road that she walks is the bridge between the town and her house while she herself is the bridge between two generations - one with its feet in the past, the other with its eyes raised towatds the future. The parallel drawn between the two images serves to reinforce the idea of linkages and connections. And, as she continues her stroll, she feels herself 'separate and alone, cut off fiom human cries, from pain'. There is the recognition that if there is love, there will be pain and by cutting oneself off hmhurt, one is also severing all ties with love. When one loves deeply, there is always the chance of being hurt by the loved one's actions or words and the anguish of parting. But one does not cease to love in fear of the suffering that will inevitably accompany it. 'No man is an island', wrote John Donne while A D Hope expresses the feling that we are all wandering islands which come together for brief periods and are then tom apart again. She feels the bonds dissolve but for a short while and is unable to sustain that experience - it is 'too brief illusion' as the cock crows thrice, recalling her to her duties. She turns the handle of the door, the symbol of her relinking with the realities of her existence and goes back to a world bound by relationships. The title immeditr;ly brings up Biblical allusions, referring to the prediction of St. Peter's denial of Jesus Christ after he had been betrayed : 'I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day before you will deny three times that you know Me.' And later, when this prediction comes to pass, and Peter denies Christ the third time, he hears the rooster crow and he goes out and weeps bitterly. The poet refa to the cock crowing thrice which brings her back to a sense of commitment. She walks the road between the house, in which her mother and daughter lie asleep, and town, three times. And three times doesst. Peter deny knowing Christ. This intensifies the undmumnts of betrayal one can sense flowing through the whole poem. Inspite ofha wish to be k,to be herself and alone, there is still a sense of guilt that she is in fact denying all that is dear and close to her heart. And just as Peter was reminded of his denial by the crowing of the rooster, so does the poet on hearing the herald of morning, walk back to her family as she 'knew his meaning well'. In Christian religious art, the crowing cock has symbolised the Resurrection of Christ. The crowing also signals the advent of morning and therefore, of new beginnings. The speaker, having come to terms with her desire for Wornand having experienced it for a short while, is now ready to take up the reins of her life once more, knowing the cock's 'meaning well' - a reminder to acknowledge one's duty and perform the labours of love gladly. The birth of a child involves the mother in the continuing life of the world Yet the involvement is also painful, threatening the mother's life by absorbing it in the life of othm. The poem embodies this dilemma, as the speaker flees fiom the sleeping mother and daughter in hk desperate need to be herself The moment of relief enables her to create the symmetry of art hmher own being and the dark trees and night that close her round. For a moment she knows herself '.. .separate and alone.. .' The separation allows the love, pain and cries to come together in their proper shape. Yet this moment, a metaphor for art, is broken by the sound of 'the cock crow on the hill', a reminder of Peter's realisation of his betrayal and of the continuing demqnds of life. Art and self-possession become betrayal and the speaker retuns home. Although the moment is described as 'brief illusion', it remains, and gives the poem its value. The detachment of art is not the alternative to life but a necessary part of it.
6.4 THE ABORIGINAL VOICE
The indigenous, colonised population, the Aborigines, had a rich oral culture that was not translated into written form until the early 2omcentury, and has still made only a slight impact on the written literature of the country. The growth of a specifically Aboriginal literature in English has been slow and remains slight. The poets Oodgeroo Noonucul (formerly Kath WaIker), Mudrooroo (Colin Johnson), and Lionel Fogarty have all published widely and achieved recognition. The chief repository ofAboriginal culture is in translation by anthropologists and scholars of ritual ceremonies among tribesmen. In spite of the existence of their rich oral culture, it was only in the 1960s that the first Aboriginal writing accessible to an English-speaking aud- began to appear.
Although women writers have been undervalued in Australian society and their concerns pushed to the margins of public attention, women's writing has been importmt since the time of the gold rush. The Aboriginal people are those who have been pushed beyond the margins of society. Present generation Aboriginals are asserting their right to determine their own condition and Aboriginal writers have emerged who speak both for and to their own people. These are people who were colonised and find thepelves forced to use the language of the coloniser to express their own condition. Yet, they have changed the language to make it speak of their particular experience. This experience continues to be circumscribed by the whites and so even when Aboriginal writers speak to their own people, the white cornmunip forms part of the dialogue.
The early history of the colonisation of Australia as well as the relations between tbz whites and the Aborigines have been the focus of novels by many Australian writers. In nineteenth century fiction and poetry, the tendency was to regard them as savagzs which is no longer the case but they are still depicted as mysterious and enigmatic However, writings by the Aborigines themselves offer a more credible portrayal of the people. Kath Walker, along with Jack Davis can be seen as the founders of this new literature but their output has not been great and Walker, at least has virtually ceased to write. The fonps hvoured by Aboriginal writers have been drama, poetry and the short story. Aboriginal writing, as with all things aboriginal, i's heavily studied and analysed. Is all their writing as some have said, necessarily political writing? There is the feeling that because thy are in a minority, any Aboriginal who writes must have a message to convey. This can be stifling to creativity. Most writings by aboriginal writers are autobiographical and therefore the 'message' is clear for it is the story of the person who has written it. Whether it is political is another point of view but Gertainly many Aboriginal writings can be disturbing to the white Australian or the non-Aboriginal reader because e~rerythingsaid is true.
The time is past when the whites in Australia looked upon the Aborigines as miserable brutes. The present generation of Australians do not feel the burden the white man once felt nor the sense of guilt felt by his successors. Aboriginal people are alive and well in many shapes and forms. The word Aboriginal is deceptive and most indigenous writers call themselvq Murris, Nungas, Kooris, Nyamitje, Wongai Mo&m AustraCian Nyoogah or any of the tribal groups that still exist in the desert regions of the vast P,m~1901-19,0, country of Australia. Many people tend to think of them as all one group when, in point of W, there are several hundred groups each different hmthe other yet all united under the blanket of oppression. They have a strong sense of pride in being Aboriginal. There are great differences among Aboriginals themselves - there are those who live fully urbanised lives, those who live on the fringes of white society and those who are still able to maintain traditional ways. These differences are reflected in the language which ranges hmoriginal tongues through dialectical forms of English to common Australian speech. Even the term 'Aborigine' is rejected by some as a European classification which gives them identity only in relation to white society.
* There is a strong bond between the Aborigines and the land and the latter has a special hold on the former. It is said that they are the oldest people on the earth and that the oldest bones of Man have been found right there in Australia. It is a well known fact that the Aboriginal people have been in Australia for around 100,000 years - much longer when compared to the two thousand years that Christianity has been around! So there is a great and unexplainable spirituality that is possibly even stronger than the Druids or other so-called pagan beliefs of a similar nature to protecting and restoring the land.
The first major work by an Aboriginal was a volume of poems by Kath Walker, We are Going, in 1964. We shall be studying the title poem in this unit. It presents the tragedy ofthe degradation and near-extermination of a people who loved and needed and wek needed by the land they once roamed freely. Her later poetry expresses an intense revival of self respect and a demand for equal opportunities and land rights previously denied to them. She can be described as an activist.
The political wtitings of Kevin Gilbert and Charles Perkins, the poetry and plays of Jack Davis, the poetry of Kath Walker and the huge quantity of work by Mudrooroo, all Aboriginal writers who were the first to be published outside Australia and to find a world-wide audience, threw open the door so others could follow. Now there are any number of books that tell of the life and trauma of being a dispossessed person in Australia, and also the pride and humour these people employ in order to survive. The heroes and heroines hitherto unmentioned also get a hearing and there are, as weU, glimpses of their strong beliefs and culture.
It should not be forgotten that it was only a couple of decades ago that Aboriginals were finally given the dignity of being recognised in their own land and given the rights every other Australian took for granted. So, their fight - and fighters - for justice and equality fiom the time of the first fleet up to the turbulent 1960s, can at last be seen and read about. The ghosts of the earlier people were once left to wander alone in the annals of Australian history as other myths sprang up in their place - myths of a people weak and dirty, savage or lazy and fit only to be servants of the ruling class. But being a people of oral tradition, the stories handed down by the elders have kept intact the lives of the boxers, football players, warriors and politicians who were the spokespersons of their depleted society. Also passed down were the laws and beliefs that made their culture strong.
6.5 KATH WALKER
Kath Walker (b.1920) belongs to the Aboriginal world by birth and upbringing. But 'civilisation' was forced on her, a curse on the flora, huna and landscape of her childhood. Strandbroke, the backdrop of her early years, was once stocked with natural beauty and she lived there with her fily- birds, beasts and trees. Several laws implicit in the Aboriginal way of life, bound man, animal and nature together. The Marginalised For instance, an AbofIginal rule laid down that one can kill while hunting, only to eat Voice and not for sport. This ensured the survival of the beasts and protected them fkom indeterminate slaughter. Aboriginal life was perfectly ordered and complete in itself. Into this closed road of unseen bonds, the white man made inroads md Aboriginal life slowly but surely got infected by alien ways including the white man's system of 'education.
Like members of all conquered ram, Oodgeroo has seen enough of civilisation. Implicit in her writing is the omnipresent shadow of the dark and ugly underbelly of civilisation. Her poems are generally directed to the white community in a spirit of reconciliation and an appeal for understanding. The first poem in the collection My People concludes with the couplet :
I'm international, never mind place; I'm for humanity, all one race.
This sentiment animates the whole collection, but the rather glib expression raises the issue of how we should read her poetry. It is a demand for attention rather than a reflexive pondering of a situation. In some of her poems where she concentrates on the situation without comment, the simple use of language makes its point with telling force. There is a sense of loss for all of humankind in the passing of the clans that once filled the place with the lightness of 'their hearts in the dance and the game'. Grief and hope are the two poles of Kath Walker's poetry. Anger breaks through only occasionally to destroy any complacent belief in the reader that the writer offers purely a literary experience.
6.6 WE ARE GOING
Please read the poem and answer the following questions : a) Who is going and where in the poem? b) How does the use of Aboriginal words make the poem distinctive? c) Is the tone ofthe poem one of revolt or resignation? Discussion
The poem expresses the agony of dispossession. The first five lines depict the contrast between the decimated indigenous people and the invaders who have proliferated in direct proportion to the dwindling numbers of the Aborigines. They are a 'subdued' and 'silent', pitifilly small group of survivors while the Whites can be seen hurrying about like 'ants'. Their 'semi-naked' state is symbolic oftheir situation for they are neither totally natuml as they used to be in earlier times nor have they been complefely assimilated into the white man's world and customs.
Their holy grounds have been desecrated and converted into rubbish heaps and in place ofthe 'old bora ring', there is a sign designating it as a garbage dumping site - the sacred place has been invaded by the trappings of 'civilisation'. Remnants of their culture struggle for survival but it is a fitile effort and the bora ring has been 'half-covered' already. Their ancestral home has been divided up and sold to white settlers without their consent.
The rest of the p3m-1is the lament and confusion of the original inhabitants of the land who have become strangers in their own home. Truths have been inverted - the race which had been one with the land for thousands of years now creeps around the country stealthily and timidly while the foreigners have appropriated the land and Modern Australian made it their own. In a poignant dirge, they remember the past when they had lived (1901-197q, in unison with the laws and rhythms of nature, It is a mouming for the passing away of an era, an entire way of life, culture and civilisation. The bora ground, the corroboree, the old sacred ceremonies, the laws of the elders, the wonder tales of Dream Time, the hunts and the laughing games are all symbols of their culture, history, music and literam which are slowly but surely passing into oblivion.
The 'wandering camp fires' are a reflection of their nomadic lifestyle when anywhere and everywhere was home. They lived off the land and conserved it too, taking hm it only what they needed without depleting the resources. The land is sacred to them also because it is the repository of the bones of their forefathers whose spirits are all around them and join them as the last embers of their campfires die away. The lines are reminiscent of Judith Wright's Bullocky where too,,,'the campfire's crimson ring' is evoked and the surrounding darkness is redolent with the spirit of the past.
' In direct contrast to the respect the Aborigines have for the land, the white man has raped and plundered it, sending species after species into extinction. He is seen as a ruthless predator who is insensitive to Nature. Instead of adapting himself to the land, he has violently shaped and moulded it according to his needs and desires. The land lies like a slaughtered beast being picked clean of its richness by the despoilers.
The anguish of this dispossessed group is silent - 'they cannot say their thoughts' - for they are not politically strong enough for their voice to be heard and have any effect. The complete identification of the people with the land and forces of Nature is powerfblly brought about in the lines 'We are the lightning bolt .. . the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon'. They were an extension of nature, like lightning and thunder, full of the boundless, vibrant energy and force of the natural elements. The Aborigines were representative of a culture and way of life which could not be separated from the land. Now they have been stripped of their very lifeforce and have become 'subdued and silent'. From being a vigorous and powerful rak, they have gradually become ghosts of their former selves, the symbol of a life destroyed and the portent of imminent extinction.
The last lines list the extermination of the original inhabitants of the land - bird, beast and human alike. Just as the ancient culture, ceremonies and beliefs have been eroded, so has the land been denuded of its vegetation and animals and soon, the Aborigines themselves will vanish &om the fke of the earth. The poem depicts the murder of an entire civilisation and way of life.
6.7 LET US SUM UP
The work of women writers reflects an engagement with social and political issues, with theoretical perspectives and moves outside cultural and disciplinary boundaries. The act of writing has helped them to move outside the narrow role and w's helpniate, outside the role of seductress, the angel or the witch. It helps problematise the areas of conflict and facilitates a search for alternative models as they deconstruct literary forms and socio-political structures. Rosemary Dobson's poetry reflects the woman's point of view, presenting a world that is a minefield of emotions where the woman's need to express her individuality is suffused with guilt.
The only human inhabitants of the country when the white settlers amved there, were the Aborigines who were bound to the land that was taken &om them, by the indissoluble link of religion and totemic kinship so that white intrusion on the land itself became a kind of bloodless murder, even where no actual mtirder took place. Kath Walker gives voice to the anguish of the dispossessed, mouming the passing of an era and a way of life. The Marginalised 6.8 QUESTIONS voice
1) What are the issues that women's writing is concerned with? 2) In what way does Cock Crow express the feminine viewpoint? 3) Is the feeling of guilt and betrayal expressed overtly or through symbols and metaphors? 4) Why does the woman in the poem experience a feeling of guilt and how does she come to tenns with it? 5) Discuss the various images and symbols in the poem and try to relate them to the ideas and feelings running through the mind of the woman. 6) Can you think of Indian or other equivalents to the problems faced by the Aborigines of Australia? Are there any tribes or communities which are kced with extinction andlor threatened with drastic changes in their way of life? 7) What picture of modem Australia is conjured up in the pow? 8) What is the contrast between the Aboriginal and white Australian way of life? 9) In what ways was the Aboriginal lifestyle an environmentally ikiendly one? 10) Read the poem closely and list the words which describe the plight of the Aboriginals and the attitude of the whites. How do these words affect the meaning and emotion conveyed by the poem?
6.9 GLOSSARY
Bora an Aboriginal rite in which boys are initiated into manhood.
Corroboree a festive or war-like dance drama with song; large ceremonial meetings that took place in all parts of Australia when seasonal conditions were suitable and abundant food resources were available. Hundreds of people travelled vast distances to trade goods, arrange marriages, and participate in social and cultural activities. Such "corroborees" - which are possible because most Aborigines are multilingual - continue today, and involve strong elements of music and dance.
Dreamtime in the mythology of the Australian Aborigines, the period of Creation in which the known landscape took shape and all life has its source. Aboriginal traditions generally do not record the origins of the cosmos itself, and the sky and Earth are thought to have been etemally present. There is, however, an exceptionally rich tradition of "myths of origin" relating to all aspects of the natural and social environment, which are thought to have taken shape during the Dreaming. Modern Australian id^ ancient Celtic priests, magicians or soothsayers of Poetty (1901-1970) Gaul, Britain or Ireland. The Druids were well versed in astrology, magic, and the mysterious powers of plants and animals; they held the oak tree and the mistletoe in great reverence, especially when the latter grew on oak trees, and they customarily conducted their rituals in oak forests.
Dutch masters the most illustrious national school of genre painting was thatsf the Netherlands in the 1 7thcentury. Probably never before or since was the ordinary life of a nation depicted so fully as was the Dutch life of this period. Not only the great masters but also the less outstanding Dutch painters excelled at it. The most important of the Dutch genre painters were the so-called little masters, including Gerard Ter Borch, Jan Steen, Gabriel Metsu, Pieter de Hooch, Gemt Dou and Adriaen van Ostade. The three leading 17tb-century Dutch masters, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Jan Vermeer, also created genre paintings of unrivalled beauty.
Feminism general term covering a range of ideologies and - theories which pay special attention to women's rights and women's position in culture and society. The term tends to be used for the women's movement, which began in the late 1 stbcentury and continues to campaign for complete political, social, and economic equality between women and men. Feminists are united by the idea that women's position in society is unequal to that of men, and that society is structured in such a way as to benefit men to the political, social, and economic detriment of women.
Peter, St (died 64 AD) the most prominent of the 12 disciples of Jesus Christ, a leader and missionary in the early Church, and traditionally the first bishop of Rome. After Jesus' arrest, Peter denied being associated with him and suffered enormous self-reproach for having done so, but the first appearance of the risen Jesus was to Peter.
Totemism a complex system of ideas, symbols, and practices based on an assumed relationship between an individual or a social group and a natural object known as a totem. The totem may be a particular - species of bird, animal, or plant; or it may be a natural phenomenon or feature of the landscape with which a group believes itself linked in some way. The term totem is derived fiom the language of the Ojibwa, a Native North American people. EACH DAY I SEE THE LONG SHIPS COMING INTO PORT Christopher Brennan (1870-1932)
And the people crowding to their rail, glad of the shore: because to have been alone with the sea and not to have known of anything happening in any crowded way, and to have heard no other voice than the crooning Sea's has chatmed away the old rancours, and the great winds have searched and swept their hurts of the old irksome thoughts: so, to their Freshen'd gaze, each land smiles a good home. Why envy I, seeing them made gay to greet the shore? Surely I do not foolishly desire to go hither and thither upon the earth and grow weary with seeing many Bands and peoples and the sea: but if I might, someday, landing I reck not where have heart to find a welcome and perchance a rest, I would spread the sail to any wandering wind of the air this night, when waves are hard and rain blots out the land
THE ORANGE TREE - John Shaw Neilson (1872-1942) The young girl stood beside me. 1 Saw not what her young eyes could see: - A light, she said, not of the sky Lives somewhere in the Orange Tree. - Is it, 1 said, of east or west? The heartbeat of a luminous boy Who with his faltering flute confessed Only the edges of his joy? Was he, B said, borne to the blue In a mad escapade of Spring Ere he could make a fond adieu To his love in the blossoming? Listen! The young girl said There calls No voice, no music beats on me; But it is almost sound: it fdls %his evening on the Orange Tree. - Does he, I said, so fear the spring Ere the white sap too far can climb? See in the full gold evening All happenings of the olden time? Is he so goaded by the green? Does the compulsion of the dew Make him unknowable but keen Asking with beauty of the blue?
- Listen! the young girl said. For all Your hapless talk you fail to see There is a light, a step, a call This evening on the Orange tree. -Is it, I said, a waste of love Imperishably old in pain, Moving as an afliighted dove Under the sunlight or the rain? Is it a fluttering heart that gave Too willingly and was reviled? Is it the stammering at a grave, The last word of a little child?
-Silence! The young girl said. Oh, why, Why will you talk to weary me? Plague me no longer now, for I Am listening like the Orange tree. SOUTH COUNTRY - Kenneth Slessor (1901-1971) Mer the whey-faced anonymity Of river-gums and scribbly-gums and bush, Mer the rubbing and the hit of brush, You come to the South Country
As if the argument of trees were done, The doubts and quarrelling, the plots and pains, All ended by these clear and gliding planes Like an abrupt solutign. And over the flat earth of empty farms The monstrous continent of air floats back Coloured with rotting sunlight and the black, Bruised flesh of thunderstorms:
Air arched, enormous, pounding the bony ridge, Ditches and hutches, with a drench of light, So huge, hmsuch infinities of height, You walk on the sky's beach
While even the dwindled hills are small and bare, As if, rebellious, buried, pitihl, Something below pushed up a knob of skull, Feeling its way to air.
THIS NIGHT'S ORBIT - R D Fitzgerald (1901-1971)
I have walked on moonlit grass before, back and along outside my house. And if there is nothing can restore that time, and little enough to rouse so much as thought of it here within sound of a clean sea, beside white dunes, amid bottlebrush, I would not be bound in this night's orbit or this moon's. For all that I know now or have known is even my life itself; outspread where still I walk; old scenes are blown like sand across these hillocks; and my head could bury in the past. But always I have met, and shall meet, the bhhour. And though one might read a learnt lesson through and regret blunders made, chances killed outright, harms done, and that greatest harm of all- days wasted, profitless, without joy- it is not that either. The turn and Ml of living brings me into the employ of wars, business, events, to run new mds,hardly or my own will, along an old time's pathway, one overgrown but known blindfold still.
LEGEND - Judidh Wright (1 91 5-)
The blacksmith's boy went out with a rifle And a black dog running behind. Cobwebs snatched at his feet, rivers hindered him, thorn-branches caught at his eyes to make him blind and the sky turned into an unlucky opal, but he didn't mind, I can break branches, I can swim rivers, I can stare out any spider 1 meet, Said he to his dog and his rifle.
The blacksmith's boy went over the paddocks with his old black hat on his head. Mountains jumped in his way, and the old crow cried, 'you'll soon be dead' And the rain came down like mattocks But he only said I can climb mountains, I can dodge rocks, I can shoot-an old crow any day, and he went on over the paddocks.
When he came to the end of the day the sun began falling. Up came the night ready to swallow him, like the barrel of a gun, like an old black hat, like a black dog hungry to follow him Then the pigeon, the magpie and the dove began wailing and the grass lay down to pillow him. His rifle broke, his hat blew away and his dog was gone and the sun was fhlling.
But in £rant ofthe night the rainbow stood on the mountain, Just as his heart foretold, He ran like a hare, he climbed like a fox; he caught it in his hands, the colours and the cold- like a bar of ice, like the column of a fountain, like a ring of gold. The pigeon, the magpie and the dove flew up to stare, and the grass stood up again on the mountain.
The blacksmith's boy hung the rainbow on his shoulder instead of his broken gun. Lizards ran out to see, snakes made way for him, and the rainbow shone as brightly* the sun. All the world said, Nobody is braver, nobody is bolder nobody else has done anything to equal it. He went home as bold as he could be with the swinging rainbow on his shoulder. BULLOCKY - Judith Wright
Beside his heavy-shouldered team, thirsty with drought and chilled with rain, he weathered all the striding years till they ran widdershins in his brain:
Till the long solitary tracks etched deeper with each lurching load were populous before his eyes, and fiends and angels used his road.
All the long straining journey grew a mad apocalyptic dream, and he old Moses, and the slaves his suengand stubborn team.
Then in his evening camp beneath the half light pillars of the trees he filled the steepled cone of night with shouted prayers and prophecies.
While past the campfire's crimson ring the star-struck darkness cupped him mmd, and centuries of cattlebells rang with their sweet uneasy sound.
Grass is across the waggon-tracks, and plough strikes bone beneath the grass, and vineprds cover all the slopes where the dead teams were used to pass.
0 vine, grow close upon that bone and hold it with your rooted hand. The prophet Moses feeds the grape, and fruitful is the Promised Land.
THE AUSTRAL,IAN DREAM -David Campbell (1915-1979)
The doorbell buzzed. It was past three o'clock , The steepleof-Saint-Andrew's weathercock Cried silently to darkness, and my head Was bronze with claret as I rolled from bed To ricochet from furniture. Light! Light Blinded the stairs, the hatstand sprang upright, I fumbled with the lock, and on the porch Stood the royal Family with a wavering torch.
'We hope,' the Queen said, 'we do not intrude. The pubs were full, most of our subjects rude. We came before our time. It seems the Queen's Command brings only, "Tell the dead marines!" We've come to you.' I must admit I'd half . Expected just this visit. With a laugh That put them at their ease, I bowed my head. 'Your Majesty is most welcome here,' I said. 'My home is yours. There is a little bed ' Downstairs, a boiler-room, might suit the Duke.' He thanked me gravely for it and he took Himself off with a wave. 'Then ,the queen Mother? She'd best bed dowwith you. There is no other But my wide bed. I'll curl up in a chair! The Queen looked thoughtful. She brushed out her hair And fblded up The Garter on a pouf 'Distress was the first commoner, and as proof That queens bow to the times,' she said, 'we three Shall share the double bed. Please follow me."
I waited for the ladies to undress- A sense of fitness, even in distress, Is always with me. They had tucked away Their sate robes in the lowboy, gold crowns lay Upon the beside tables; ropes of pearls Lassoed the plastic lampshade; their soft curls Were spread out on the pillows and they smiled. 'Hop in,' said the Queen Mother. In I piled Between them to lie like a stick of wood. I couldn't find a thing to say. My blood Beat, but like rollers at the ebb of tide. 'I hope your Majesties sleep well,' I lied. A hand touched mine and the Queen said, 'I am Most gratehl to you, Jock. Please call me Ma'am.'
TERRA AUSTRALIS - James McAuley (1917-1976) Voyage within you, on the fabled ocean, And you will find that Southern Continent, Quiros' vision-his hidalgo heart And mythical Australia, where reside All things in their imagined counterpart.
It is your land of similes: the wattle Scatters its pollen on the doubting heart; The flowers are wide-awake; the air gives ease. There you come home; the magpies call you Jack And whistle like larrikins at you fkom @e trees.
There too the angophora preaches on the hillsides With the gestures of Moses; and the white cockatoo, Perched on his limbs, screams with demoniac pain; And who shall say on what errand the insolent emu Walks between morning and night on the edge ofthe plain?
But northward in valleys of the fiery Goat Where the sun like a centaur vertically shoots His raging arrows with unemng aim, Stand the ecstatic solitary pyres Of unknown lovers, featureless with flame.
AUSTRALIA - A.D. Hope (1907-2000)
A nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey In the field uniform of modem wars Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away. They call her a young country, but they lie: She is the last of lands, the emptiest, A woman beyond her change of life, a breast Still tender but within the womb is dry;
Without songs, architecture, history: The emotions and superstitions of younger lands, Her rivm of water drawn among inland sands, The river of her immense stupidity
~lw'dsher monotonous tribes fiom Cairns to Perth, In them at last the ultimate men arrive Whose boast is not: 'we live' but 'we survive' A type who will inhabit the dying earth.
And her five cities, like five teeming sores Each drains her, a vast parasite robber-state Where second-hand European pullulate Timidly on the edge of alien shores.
Yet there are some like me tum gladly home From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find The Arabian desert of the human mind, Hoping, if still fiom the deserts the prophets come.
Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes Which is called civilization ova there.
MOSCHUS MOSCHIFERUS - A Songfor St. Cecilia's Day - A.D. Hope In the high jungle where Assam meets Tibet The small Kastura, most archaic of deer, Were driven in herds to cram the hunters' net And slaughtered for the musk-pods which they bear
But in those thickets of rhododendron and birch The tiny matures now grow hard to find. Fewer and fewer survive each year. The search Employs new means, more exquisite and refined:
The hunters now set out by tow or three; Each carries a bow and one a slender flute. Deep in the forest the archers choose a tree And climb; the piper squats against the root.
And there they wait until all trace of man And rwnow of his passage dies away. They melt into the leaves and, while they scan The glade below, their comrade starts to play.
Through those vast listening woods a trmulous skein Of melody wavers, delicate and shirll: Now dancing and now pensive, now a rain Of pure, bright drops of sound and now the still,
Sad wailing of lament; fiom tune to tune It winds and modulates without a pause; The hunters hold their breath; the trance of noon Grows tense; with its full power the music draws
A shadow From a juniper's darker shade; Bright-eyed, with quivering muzzle and pricked ear, The little musk-deer slips into the glade Led by an ecstasy that conquers fear.
A wild enchantment lures him, step by step, Into its net of crystalline sound, until The leaves stir overhead, the bowstrings snap And poisoned shafts bite sharp into the kill. COCK CROW - Rosemary Dobson (1920-1985) Wanting to be myself, alone, Between the lit house and the town I took the rod, md at the bridge Turned back and walked the way I'd come.
Three times I took that lonely stretch, Three times the dark trees closed me round, The night absolved me of my bonds Only my footsteps held the ground.
My mother and my daughter slept, One life behind and one before, And I that stood between denied Their needs in shutting40 the door.
And walking up and down the road Knew myself, sepamte and alone, Cut off from human cries, bmpain, And love that grows about the bone,
Too brief illusion! Thrice for me I heard the cock crow on the hill, And turned the handle of the door Thinking I knew his meaning well. WE ARE GOENG - Oodgeroo Noonuccal (gatlr Walker) For Grannie Cdwell
They came in to the little town A semi-naked band subdued and silent, All that remained of their tribe. They came here to the place of their old bora ground Where now the many white men hurry about like ants. Notice of estate agent reads: 'Rubbish May be Tipped Here'. Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring. They sit and are conhsed they cannot say their thoughts; 'We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers. We belong here, we are of he old ways. We are the corroboree and the bora ground, We are the old sacred ceremonies, the laws of the elders. We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal legends told. We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires. We are the lightning-bolt over Gaphernbah Hill Quick and terrible, And the Thunder &r him, that loud fellow. We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon. We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fkes burn low. We are nature and the past, all the old ways Gone now and scattered. The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter. The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone hmthis place. The bora ring is gone. The corroboree is gone. And we are going.' HISTORY - Rex Ingamells These are the images that make my dreams, strong images but hi], dimmed-with-glow clear:
Pioneer ships lumberiag in the sunset, lumbering along our sombre eastern coastlines, swaying, awkward but beautiful, north to Port Jackson.. . The stark hatred and reeking soul-fire of men's faces, men pent in penitentiaries and chained in road-gangs, herded as cattle, worked as cattle, fierce in their misery.. . Stern-hearted freemen, felling tall trees, building rough homesteads amid far, unhiliar places, hoping, cherishing their preconceived vision of beauty and propriety.. .
Herds of cattle, lowifig by the fertile banks of eastern rivets; drowsing under redgums, where the black-and-white magpie sits calling ecstatically ..
Flocks of sheep*bleatingperpetually on green hillsides, tired of fine feeding, joyous at lik .. .
Deserted station-houses, quiet in drought. Bones of cattle, camels. horses, men. And the despised black who lives through it all, finding himself water, native plums, yams, and wild-honey hmthe honey-ants.. .
Cities growing up, towering into the firture; and this land's destined vast cities of imagination. MOORAWATHIMEERING - Rex Ingamells
Into moorawathimeering, where atninga dare not tread, leaving wurly for a wilban, taliabilla, you have fled. Wombalunga curses, waitjurk- though we cannot break the ban, and follow tchidna any further after onetime karaman
Fair in moorawathimeering, , safe hmwallan darenderong, tallabilla waitjurk, wander silently the whole day long.
Go with only lillirj to walk along beside you there, while douran-douran voices wail and Karaworo beats the air.
DLIRER :MSBRUCK, 1495 - 'Ern Malley '
I had often, cowled in the slumberous heavy air, Closed my inanimate lids to find it real, As I knew it would be, the colowhl spires And painted roofi, the high snows glimpsed at the back, All reversed in the quiet reflecting waters- Not knowing then that Durer perceived it too. Now I find that once more I have shrunk To an interloper, robber of dead men's dream, I had read in books that art is not easy But no one warned that the mind repeats In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still The black swan of trespass on alien waters.
AUSTRALIA - Ania Walwicz
You big ugly. You too empty. You desert with your nothing nothing nothing. You scorched suntanned. Old too quickly. Acres of suburbs watching the telly. You bore me. Freckle silly children. You nothing much. With your big sea. Beach beach beach. I've seen enough already. You dumb dirty city with bar stools. You're ugly. You silly shoppingtown. You copy. You too far everywhere. You laugh at me. When I came this woman gave me a box of biscuits. You try to be fiiendly but you're not very kiendly. You never ask me to your house. You insult me. You don't know how to be with me. Road mad tree tree. I came from crowded and many. I came from rich. You have nothing to offer. You 're poor and spread thin. You big. So what. I'm small. It's what's in. You silent on Sunday. Nobody on your streets. You dead at night, You go to sleep too early. You don't excite me. You scare me with your hopeless. Asleep when you walk. Too hot to think. You big awful. You don't match me. You burnt out. You too big sky. You laugh with your big healthy. You want everyone to be the same. You're dumb. You do like anybody else. You engaged Doreen. You big cow. You average average. Cold day at school playing around at lunchtime. Running around for nothing. You never accept me. For you own. You alwrys ask me where I'm &om. You always ask me. You tell me I look strange. Different, You don't adopt me. You laugh at the way I speak. You think you're better than me. You don't like me. You don't have any interest in another country. Idiot centre of your own self. You think the rest of the world walk around without shoes or electric light. You don't go anywhere. You stay at home. You like one another. You go crazy on Saturdw night. You get drunk. You don't like me and you don't like women. You put your arm around men in bars. You're rough. I m't speak to you. You burly burly. You're just silly to me. You big man. Poor with all your money,. You ugly furniture. You ugly house. Relaxed in your summer stupor. All year. Never fillly awake. Dull at school. Wait for other people to tell you what to do. Follow the leader. Can't imagine. Work horse. Thick legs. You go to work in the morning. You shiver on a tmin. From AUSTRALIA - Jok~Farmil Land of widest hope, of pro~niseboundless, Why wert thou hidden in a dark, strange sea To wait through ages, hitless, scentless, soundless,
Till fiom thy slumber men should waken thee?- Why did' st thou lie, with ear that never hearkened
The sounds without, the cris of strife and play, %. Like some sweet child within n ci~amberdaekmd Left sleeping far into a troubid &j?- What opiate sealed thine eyes while all the others Grew tired and faint in East and West and North; Why did' st thou dream until thy joyfial brothers Found where thou wast, and led thee smiling forth?- Why did' st thou mask the happy hethou wearest? Why wert thou veiled hmall the eager eyes? Why left so long, O first of lands and fairest, Beneath the tent of unconjectutd skies? Then sweet Australia, fell a benediction Of sleep upon thee, where no wandering breath Might come to tell thee of the loud affliction Of cursing tongues and clmuring hosts of death; And with the peace of His great love around thee, And rest that clashing ages could not break, Strong-sighted eyes of English seekers found thee, Strong English voices cried to thee 'Awake!'
Here were no dreadful vestiges imprinted With evil messages and brands of Cain, No mounds of death or walls of relkge dinted With signs that Christ had lived and died in vain; No chill memorids here proclaimed the story Of kingships stricked for md murders done; Here was a marvel and a separate glory, One land whose history had not begun!
One unsown garden, fenced hy sea-crags sterile, Whose iron breasts flung back the thundering waves, From all the years of fierce unrest and peril, And slaves, and lords, and broken blades, and graves; One gracious &hold for the free, where only Soft dusky feet fell, reaching not thy sleep; One field inviolate, untroubled, lonely, Across the dread of the uncharted deep!
0 dear and kir! Awakened fbm thy sleeping So late! The world is breaking into noon; The eyes that all the mom were dim with weeping Smile through the tears that will cease dropping soon! 'TERRAAUSTRALIS - Douglas Stewart (1913-1985) Captain Quiros and Mr William Lane, Sailing some highway shunned by tmding traffic Where in the world's skull liea moonlit brain Flashing and crinkling rolls the vast pacific,
Approached each other zigzag, in conkion, Lane hmthe west, the Spaniard tiom the east, Their flickering canvas breaking the horizon That shuts the dead off in a wall of mist.
"Three hundred years since I set out from Lima And off Espiritu Santo lay down and wept Bemuse no faith in men, no truth in islands And still unfound the shining continent slept;
"And swore upon the cross to came again Though fever, thirst and mutiny stalked the seas And poison spiders spun their webs in Spain, And did return, and sailed three centuries,
''Sidilg to see the golden headlands wade Arid saw no safi, no land, but this wide circle :%''heremeonlight clots the waves with coils of wed kid hags like silver moss on sail and tackle,
''Ulitil I thought to trudge till time was done With all except my purpose rin to waste; And now upon this ocean of the moon, A shzpe, a shade, a ship, and hmthe west!" AUSTRALIA - Bernard 8'Dowd (1866-1 953) L.ast .=-thing dredged by sailor Time hnlSpace, .4re you a drift Sargasso, where the West In hdrjon calm rebuilds her Fatal nest? Or Deles ofa coming Sun-God's race? heyou for Light, and trimmed, with oil in place, Or but a Will o' Wisp on marshy quest? A new demesne for Mammon to infest? Or lurks rnifieimial Eden 'neath your fiice?
The cmotaphs of species dead elsc\vhe?e That in your limits leap and swim and fly, Or trail unmriny harp-strings hmyour trees, Mix omej3 with the auguries that dare To plant the Cross upon your firehead sky, A virgin helpmate Ocean at your knees. THE SOUTHERN CALL - Bernard 8 Dowd
Come hither ye, o'er all the world who seek the Altar room Of spacio~~sFreedom ever lit for worshippers to be: Come from the jaded Ivds to us, come hmthe sullen gloom, To sunny soils and cities sweet, to Love and Liberty! The Tmth by which ye steer by day, the Good ye pray for nightly, Here ye will realise at last the Sempiternal Dream, Join in the Great Adventure towards the Mystic Pilgrim's goal, And reach the summit that ye sought for following the Gleam - For here it is, we know, and now - the City of the Soul.
When men outgrew the simple fane that awed their fathers' eyes, And waking found the Presence gone, the Mernrnon music dumb, One sf the dreams they loved the best, and yearned to realise, Told of a star that leaps to light when new gods are to come. Surely 'tis here Messiahs new the old world's chains will sunder, In purer skies, the genial air, and omnipresent wonder! So, mme ye all whose lighted eyes behold the star above The crib where waits maturing long the Hope that is to be: And bring the gold of willing hands, the kinkincense of Love, And, priceless o'er Golconda's gems, the myrch of Liberty!
We need your grit to make the Wild the fair abiding place That ages have been yearning for, the Land of Heart's Desire: Yet while we beacon hill on hill with signals to the race. Sorely we need your prudence old, lest reckless we aspire To change the orbit of the world to grati@ a passion, Or Kings eternal to dethrone to fit the moment's fishion. Away so long fiom war's dire lore, we half forger to fight, Unused to hunger we despise our smiling plenty's worth, Wrong is a stranger so to us, we scarcely know the Right, Yet steadied by your wisdom we were Savioum of the earth.
And not alone to feel the mouths of children at her breast Australia wafts her sibyl call wherever white men are; But, Warden of the Boundaries, lone outpost for the West, She dare not risk the paling here of splendid Furope's star. Out in the might we seem to see piratic dangers sparkle, And on our noon's horizon growing omens grimly darkle O'come ye of the white race hither, come ye to her call! 'Tis not alone for us the word she sends you o'er the sea. As ye shall. rise while up we soar, our failure means your Ml - The fkll of Truth, the fall of Love, the hll of Liberty!
Where ancient sorrow darkens not nor ancient evils atain, There is no air on earth to-day gives oracles so clear; The Creed is here that opes the Door the creeds have tried in vain; No secret of the universe ye may not cipher here. Hither hath come the Holy Grail that ages long ye fared for; Yea, He is here, we know, we know, the God all gods prepd for, And builds for us, if but we will, millennia1 nationhood; Song for the soul, if but we call, will fill the desert hush, His desert ravens' from wings will bear our bodies food; If but we strike, the desert rock will with His fountains gush.
The clanking of the Iron Age grows musical at last; The dove replaces owl and bat, leopard becomes a hwn; Sinster angels with the gloom are disappearing ht; The rumbling portents slowly change as midnight flowers in dawn Out of the yearnings that ye sowed in centuries of sorrow Springs the hition of your hith, Australia and To-morrow! The Sun-burst of the Coming Age is golden on the hills; Shouting for joy the Sons of God amid the glory stand; Alchemist Love elixirs new for jaded man distils; And Time the wizard rends the veil that hid the Promised Land! Unto the wronged of ages singing songs of Human Rights, Redolent of the wattle bloom and tonic with the gum: Into the prisons olden flashing cleansing Southern Lights, Unto her citizens to be, Australia cooees 'Come!' Reading List : 1. Clark, Manning. A History of Australia. Melbourne : MbT, 1962. 2. Crowley, F K. A New History of Australia. Melbourne: Heinemam,1974. 3. Dutton, Geoffrey (ed.). The Literature of Australia. Ringwood : Penguin, 1976. 4. Goodwin, Ken. A History of -4ustralian Literature, London : Macmillan, 1985. 5. Grecn, H M. A History of Australian Literature. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1967, vo1.2. 6. Hergehan, Laurie. The Penguin History of Australian Literature. Ringwood : Penguin, 1988. 7. Hope, A D. Native Comps;lions : Essays 811d Comments on Australian Literature. Sydney : Angus &; Robertson, 1974. Also, Judith Wright, Melboume : AWW series, 1975. 8. Jaffa, H C. Modem -4ustralian Poetry, 1920-1 970 : A Guide to Information Sources. Detroit: Gale, 1979. 9. Jain, Jasbir (ed). Women's Writing : Text and Context. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 1998. 10. King, Bruce. The Ncw Literatures. Macmillan, 1980. 1 1. Kramer, Leonie (ed). The Oxford History of Australian Literature. Melbourne: OUP, 1981. 12. Lock, Fred & Lawson, Alan. Australian Literature : A Reference Guide, kfelbouine : OUP, 1977. 13. Moore, T. Inglis. Social Pattcms In Australian Literature. London, Angus & Robertson, 1971. 14. Semmler, Clement (ed). Twentieth Century Australian Literary Criticism. London, OUP, 1967. 15. Serie, Geoffrey. From Deserts the Prophets Come : The Creative Spirit In Australia. Melbourne : Heinemann, 1973. 16. Wilkes, G A. Australian Literature : A Conspectus. Sydney, A&R, 1973. 17. Wright, Judith. Preoccupatiot~sin Australian Poetry. Melbourne, OUP, 1965.
Specific Articles : 1. Kramer, Leonie. "Judith Wright, Hope, McAuley", Literary Criterion, XV,3- 4, 1980,83-92. 2. Smith, Vivian. "Expcriment and Renewal : A Missing Link in Modem Australian Poetry",Southerly, XLVII, 13- 18. 3. Wieland, James. "Some Recent ,4ustralian Writing : Questions Of 'Meaning"', Span, 16-17,1983,88-113. 4. Wright, Judith. "Australia's Double Aspect", Literary Criterion. Also, "Poetry In a Young Country", Studies In Australian and Indian Literature, N> Delhi: ICCR, 197 1. 5. Zwicky, Fay. "A Question Of Identity : Problems in Contemporary Australian Poetry", IACLALS Newsletter, 10 July, 1982,6-7.
Journals : 1. Australian Book Review. 2. Australian Literary Studies. 3. Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 4. Meanjin. 5. New Literature World Review. 6. Overland. 7. Quadrant. 8. Rajasthan University Studies in English (Special numbers on Aus. Lit.). 9. Southerly. 10. The Literary Criterion (special numbers on Aus. Lit.). 1 1. Westerly. 12. World Literature Written in English.